Home Mystery

Ever since her husband’s affair, Mary Minor “Harry” Haristeen has taken a sabbatical from men. The 30-ish divorcée is content to tend her farm and gain a bird’s-eye view of the neighbors from her perch as small-town postmistress. Yet when a hunky city slicker comes to town with no clue about farming, she’s happy to show him the ropes. When pieces of a dismembered body crop up around Crozet, however, the wary townsfolk reckon the handsome stranger is the culprit.

It's been six months since Kate, Michael, and Emma confronted the Dire Magnus, but the trail to their long-missing parents remains cold. Then Michael and Emma find a man who saw them ten years ago - three days after they disappeared. He knows about a map of a distant land, a place shrouded in mystery that may lead them to their parents. Meanwhile, Kate's connection to the Book of Time is growing stronger and stronger, until a dangerous trick gets her stuck in the past, searching for a friend to help her. Only a perilous quest and a daring risk will help the children to harness the power of the Books of Beginning.

At a party in Manhattan, Maggie Holloway - one of the fashion world's most successful photographers - is thrilled to be reunited with her beloved stepmother. A widow now, Nuala Moore is equally delighted to see her long-lost stepdaughter and invites Maggie to spend a few weeks at her home in Newport, Rhode Island. But when Maggie arrives, she finds Nuala murdered, apparently by a burglar. Heartbroken, Maggie is stunned to learn she had inherited Nuala's stunning Victorian home...and horrified when she begins to suspect that Nuala's death was not random, but part of a diabolical plot conceived by a twisted mind.

Of especially naughty children it is sometimes said, "They must have been raised by wolves." The Incorrigible children actually were. Turning sixteen is a bittersweet occasion for Miss Penelope Lumley: Her parents remain disappointingly absent, and her perfectly nice young playwright friend, Simon Harley-Dickinson, has not been heard from since he went to visit his ailing great-uncle Pudge in the old sailors' home in Brighton.

1943, Seattle. While raging war reshapes the landscape of Europe, its impact is felt thousands of miles away too. Before the war, Nora Kinney was one of countless housewives and mothers in her comfortable Capitol Hill neighborhood. Now, with her doctor husband stationed in North Africa, Nora feels compelled to do more than tend her victory garden or help with scrap metal drives . . .

Young architect Wren Fontaine lands her dream job: restoring Greenleaf House, New York’s finest Gilded-Age mansion, to its glory days. But old homes have old secrets: Stephen Greenleaf—heir to what’s left of his family’s legacy—refuses to reveal what his plans are once the renovation is completed. And still living in a corner of the home is Stephen’s ninety-year-old Aunt Agnes who’s lost in the past, brooding over a long-forgotten scandal while watching Wren with mistrust.

London, 1968: The body of a teenage girl is found just steps away from the Beatles' Abbey Road recording studio. The police are called to a residential street in St John's Wood where an unidentified young woman has been strangled. Detective Sergeant Cathal Breen believes she may be one of the many Beatles fans who regularly camp outside Abbey Road Studios. With his reputation tarnished by an inexplicable act of cowardice, this is Breen's last chance to prove he's up to the job.

Prairie Nightingale is both the midlife mother of two teenage girls and a canny entrepreneur who has turned homemaking into a salaried profession. She’s also fascinated with the gritty details of other people’s lives. So when seemingly perfect Lisa Radcliffe, a member of her former mom-friends circle, suddenly disappears, it’s in Prairie’s nature to find out why. Given her innate talent for vital pattern recognition, Prairie is out to catch a few clues by taking a long, hard look at everyone in Lisa’s life—and uncovering their secrets.

Regan Peters knows her husband John wants to give her and their children a good life. The long hours he puts in as a financial advisor prove his dedication, and despite how mysterious he is about his past, that's been enough for her to get through the hard days. Until the FBI shows up at their door, and Regan learns that her husband has been running a Ponzi scheme, is mixed up with dangerous criminals, and has been living under an assumed identity all these years. Everything she thought she knew about her life has been a lie.

Once Amy and Dan Cahill's choice was simple - take a million dollars or the first of 39 Clues that lead to the source of unimaginable power. Now it's clear that the hunt for Clues is bigger than anything that Amy and Dan could ever have imagined.

Nine-year-old Levi King knew he should have left for home sooner; now he's alone in the darkness of vast Caddo Lake, in a boat whose motor just died. A sudden noise distracts him - and all goes dark. Darren Mathews is trying to emerge from another kind of darkness; after the events of his previous investigation, his marriage is in a precarious state of rebuilding, and his career and reputation lie in the hands of his mother, who's never exactly had his best interests at heart. Now she holds the key to his freedom, and she's not above a little maternal blackmail to press her advantage.

Recovering on a remote Scottish island, his peace doesn’t last long. He is pulled in to a murder inquiry by the overstretched local police. A newcomer, popular with the islanders, has died in perplexing circumstances. The community's reactions are complicated and fragile. It’s good to be back on the job. And when Simon returns to Lafferton, an arsonist is on the rampage and a woman whose daughter disappeared some years before is haunting the police station seeking closure. She will not let it rest, and Simon is called in to do a cold-case review.

Governments were toppled and rulers were killed during the last attempt to find the lost treasure Amy and Dan Cahill are searching for - do they even stand a chance?

In the fourth book of the Cape Refuge Series, a teenage girl is found murdered, and the scene matches one in a book by a famous mystery writer who just moved to the island. This murder has a connection to Hanover House, and the residents there might never be the same.

One warm night four children stood in front of a bakery. No one knew them. No one knew where they had come from. Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny are orphans. Can they find a home where they can stay together as a family?

The crime fiction canopy's a broad one, with room to give shelter to writing of all sorts, as editor Lawrence Block shows with At Home in the Dark.

The Aldens visit an old Kansas inn that’s full of secrets! Nobody knows why a famous photographer visited the inn just to take a single picture. And what about the other legendary guest - a heroic young stranger who’d come west on an “orphan train”? A long-lost riddle just might solve all these mysteries!

Movie star Nicky Tallon selects architect Wren Fontaine to renovate Turnbull House, where he’ll be filming his next movie. Even to Wren, used to old homes, this one is special: a two-hundred-year-old federal-style home on a private island in New York harbor, designed by the most celebrated architect of the day. But Turnbull House hides many secrets, such as the disappearance of the sea captain who built it. That’s just a historical curiosity, until a studio executive no one likes is killed.

Lord Fredrick Ashton may not feel ready to be a father, but with a little Ashton on the way he's sure about one thing: The wolfish curse on his family must end soon, before the child is born. Penelope willingly takes on the challenge; when Lady Constance's doctor prescribes a seaside holiday, Penelope jumps at the chance to take the three Incorrigible children to Brighton, where she hopes to persuade the old sailor Pudge to reveal what he knows about the Ashton curse.

Amy and Dan make shocking discoveries about their family's power and their parents' deaths as they track the next clue to a remote corner of the world.